[Cryptography] [cryptography] Secure universal message addressing

[John Levine]

>Probably because we're still living the dream of the original Arpanet days.  One of the wonderful features email systems
>provided was the flattening of communications hierarchies.  Anyone could send anyone email.

That was and is probably the most important reason why e-mail has
thrived for decades despite all of the spam and malware and other
crud.  You can use e-mail for first contact, and you can send e-mail
to anyone.  Back in the day when we were grad students there were
umpteen walled garden mail systems like MCI Mail and AOL.  Then they
all connected to Internet mail so users could send mail to the people
they wanted to reach, and then either died (MCI) or became just
another mail provider (AOL).

The idea of private per-correspondent addresses for message security
is very old.  See for example the Zoemail patent, US patent 5,930,479
which was filed in 1996 and issued in 1999.  It doesn't expire until
October, and has been asserted in at least one lawsuit (I was the
defandant's technical expert) so take a look.

R's,
John